Private API – An API that is exposed through interface VPC endpoints and isolated from the public internet

Private integration – An API Gateway integration type for a client to access resources inside a customer’s VPC through a private API endpoint without exposing the resources to the public internet.

Proxy integration – You can set up a proxy integration as an HTTP proxy integration type or a Lambda proxy integration type.

For the HTTP proxy integration, API Gateway passes the entire request and response between the frontend and an HTTP backend.

For the Lambda proxy integration, API Gateway sends the entire request as an input to a backend Lambda function.

Usage plan – Provides selected API clients with access to one or more deployed APIs. You can use a usage plan to configure throttling and quota limits, which are enforced on individual client API keys.

API Endpoint Types

Edge-optimized API endpoint: The default host name of an API Gateway API that is deployed to the specified region while using a CloudFront distribution to facilitate client access typically from across AWS regions. API requests are routed to the nearest CloudFront Point of Presence.

Regional API endpoint: The host name of an API that is deployed to the specified region and intended to serve clients, such as EC2 instances, in the same AWS region. API requests are targeted directly to the region-specific API Gateway without going through any CloudFront distribution.

You can apply latency-based routing on regional endpoints to deploy an API to multiple regions using the same regional API endpoint configuration, set the same custom domain name for each deployed API, and configure latency-based DNS records in Route 53 to route client requests to the region that has the lowest latency.

Private API endpoint: Allows a client to securely access private API resources inside a VPC. Private APIs are isolated from the public Internet, and they can only be accessed using VPC endpoints for API Gateway that have been granted access.

API Gateway helps you manage traffic to your backend systems by allowing you to set throttling rules based on the number of requests per second for each HTTP method in your APIs.

You can set up a cache with customizable keys and time-to-live in seconds for your API data to avoid hitting your backend services for each request.

API Gateway lets you run multiple versions of the same API simultaneously with API Lifecycle.

After you build, test, and deploy your APIs, you can package them in an API Gateway usage plan and sell the plan as a Software as a Service (SaaS) product through AWS Marketplace.

API Gateway offers the ability to create, update, and delete documentation associated with each portion of your API, such as methods and resources.

All of the APIs created expose HTTPS endpoints only. API Gateway does not support unencrypted (HTTP) endpoints.

Monitoring

API Gateway console is integrated with CloudWatch, so you get backend performance metrics such as API calls, latency, and error rates.

You can set up custom alarms on API Gateway APIs.

API Gateway can also log API execution errors to CloudWatch Logs.

Security

To authorize and verify API requests to AWS services, API Gateway can help you leverage signature version 4. Using signature version 4 authentication, you can use IAM and access policies to authorize access to your APIs and all your other AWS resources.

Pricing

You pay only for the API calls you receive and the amount of data transferred out.

API Gateway also provides optional data caching charged at an hourly rate that varies based on the cache size you select.

Limits

Resource or Operation

Default Limit

Can Be Increased

Throttle limit per account per region

10000 requests per second (RPS) with an additional burst capacity provided by the token bucket algorithm, using a maximum bucket capacity of 5000 requests.

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